


Record Year

by JacksWild



Series: If Songs Told Our Stories [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: ALL THE ANGST, Angst, Don't Judge Me, Drinking, Loneliness, M/M, Nostalgia, Sadness, Song fic, after a drive home, i wrote this in 20 minutes, it was time you all knew what was in me, read it in spoken word
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-16
Updated: 2016-04-16
Packaged: 2018-06-02 13:11:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6567703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JacksWild/pseuds/JacksWild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It all started with incriminating words. Anger deeply held, seeking satiation in being verbally released in the middle of ire and resentment. It began with mutual dislike of crowds, throngs of worshippers, missed anxiety and heartfelt thanks shared in front of the masses. It continued in moments of passing, a curt nod, a subtle smirk, a diligent avoidance of eye contact. It ended with a fumbling kiss on a parapet looking over the ministry atrium on a night of yet another ball, drunken and lost in the could be and if only. A whispered name, "lily...", by a man far enough along to mix up regret and hope. And a horrified look of a man not drunk enough to ignore the stab of disappointment lancing his heart. A quick stumble back, a grunt of pain... And the Saviour of the Wizarding World, disappearing. Leaving a confused and disgruntled War Battered Hero to his bleak and dark thoughts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Record Year

**Author's Note:**

> This will be a part of a new series... that looks for now to be angsty as hell. They can all be read so far as stand alone, song fics. But they will eventually tell a tale. Somehow. Hopefully. 
> 
> For Record Year, I challenge you to find Record Year by Eric Church and listen to it. It is what gave me the motivation to finally write something bleak. 
> 
> With love, 
> 
> Jacks

Record Year

I haven’t seen you in a year. One year, since you left me… disgruntled, confused, lost… longing. I want to dredge up the anger that used to linger over and under every word, every thought, every movement… but I can’t.

I dedicated more of my life to you and your survival, than I ever did to mine. I woke up to thoughts of you, and went to sleep with anxiety over your nights. I lost the times I was in pain over your defiance, left the counting of curses at your behavior… a lost transition in time… a waste of precious energy. 

You grew up into a fine man. Lost the bit of absentia that used to fade in and out of your eyes. You lost the aggression, but I bet that had more to do with no longer being a pawn in a war that was both bigger than you and was about you. You filled out, those shoulders that broadened not by just the hard work and dedication that you put into your job, but by you simply being able to remember to eat, to bathe, to not live in fear. 

I started collecting things that reminded me of you, before you even left school. It began in year 2 for you. Small trinkets that gave me a moment of pause. Not all of them good, the troll hair being one of those things. But none-the-less, the collection grew. Around your year 5 I started collecting records. These muggle creations with music etched into the grooves of plastic. A waste, but beautiful… the sounds reminiscent of different days, the faint crackling, reminding me not to get lost in the sound… to stay alive. 

I collected every type of music that I came across, even if only a word, a sentence, a phrase in one song reminded me of you… the whole album would be mine… devoured by my conscious thought. You demanded nothing less. 

You went on your journey in Year 7, the adventure that wouldn’t bloody end. I traced you as best I could. That year was the worst for all of us… perhaps for you and I more than the rest. I was so alone, so angry, so lost. I had lost my mentor; I had killed yours. We were two sides of the same coin… and neither of us wanted to know that… neither of us were allowed to acknowledge that. 

I am sitting here listening to a country ballad from the continent thinking of the night that I sent you a patronus… drunk on the loneliness that can only come to a man that knew death was at the end of a long arduous road. There was a bit of drum, a strum of string, and twang of voice… and the mention of a dirt road… all of them fit so seemingly, so perfectly to your adventure. 

I lost myself in drunkenness that year. Between stopping the carrows from killing students, to keeping the dark lord at bay, to warily dealing with the side eyes that would be aimed at me by my peers and students alike. No one could know, no one could know…

I couldn’t tell them, and had to wait to tell you. I had to wait. Damn it! I had to wait. It was always those words… “You must wait, Severus. The boy can’t know. Not yet.” 

How long would you wait!? How long would I sit there, and watch you fumble, watch you fail, watch you fall? How long would I have to sit and watch, and wait, and hurt. How long would I have to cause your hurt? 

This isn’t to say that I liked you… I barely tolerated you. Loathed you from the first moment. Your birth was the death of all the things that I had loved. The hope that I had cherished in my darkest nights, that her love would be an echo of ours. But it wasn’t. And she never had an echo.

It took me years, to recognize that I didn’t lover her… nay, that I wasn’t IN love with her. She wasn’t my type.

I can’t help the laugh… the anguish that mars the sound in the silent study as I look deeply into the amber liquid that sloshes in the crystal in my hand. She wasn’t my type. 

If only I would have known that it would take her bloody son to show me that. Some think that Regulus was the man that showed me that my type was men. Or possibly the rumors of Lucius if all things were to be believed. Don’t… oh god don’t believe them. 

I have never longed for another. The disappointment at the fumbling attempts. The bitter taste in my mouth after… the sweat and the grunts, they never appealed. 

I was stuck with what I received when I was a marked man. The dark lord was a disgusting man, a shadow of what intimacy was for… a faint ideology of what punishment was… mixing up what fucking could be with what it was for me. 

It wasn’t until after the war, when you walked into the guarded stone atrocity that was housing me, and demanded my release. Your custody! Can you imagine my anger? I bet you can. The seething kind that sits like a roiling boil in the gut. 

But they released me. As quick as you can be, the shackles were gone… the clothing changed, the feet covered, the man who had lived in the shadows, living with the bearer of light.

Imagine my utter astonishment, when you walked me out… only to tell me that I was to stay at your home. That I was to be silent… that I was to not ruin what you had worked hard for. 

I obeyed, more out of a habit, than anything else. After all, it would take an ignorant man to misunderstand your arrogance with a lack of power. And I was not an ignorant man. Your power rolled off you in waves… 

So I sit here… thinking about all those small moments when I learned about you. A year I was with you in that home of yours. A home. Not a house. Not a place to live between. A home. 

The morning was filled with food, quiet contemplation, your mornings were filled with work. You took all the courses that you could to fix what you’d missed. You became fit, addicted to working out that lithe body of yours to escape the dreams that haunted you, the ghosts that taunted you. You spent your afternoons at the ministry… I didn’t know to what end, until I did. 

That day that you walked in with a stack of papers, and threw them on the table and walked out. I had been so harsh with you. You were so brilliant, a more weak man could have admitted that. I was weaker than most. I didn’t want to acknowledge that you had been the best of both of your parents, wanted to only see you as the worst of one… and nothing of the other. 

You left that night, and didn’t come back for three days. I was tied to the house, the home that had sheltered me. The curiosity got the best of me and I picked up the papers that had been so aggressively thrown at me. 

Your acceptance into the Auror academy, your acceptance into the healing academy, your acceptance… into the potions guild. Your signature on all three. The one with the Hogwarts crest, bearing your NEWTS, O’s in all. The tightening in my chest that was getting more restrictive at the memories of that morning, three days prior when I had called you arrogant, stupid, ignorant, defiant, useless… crowding in on me. The darkness… I wanted it. 

I was trying not to be a weaker man.

I lifted up the papers, and saw my name.

The glass that I had been holding shattered.

Acquitted.

Acquitted.

Absolved of all wrong doing.

Hero.

Merlin, Order of Merlin… 

Acknowledgement.

The prophet that was at the bottom of the stack. My name splashed on the front. My story in an article that was the most honest that had ever been penned from the editorial crew.

I was free.

I was free.

And a letter from you.

I never read that letter. I was so scared of what would be in there. I left it sealed, and stuck it in my pocket. 

You came home the next night. And you told me to leave. The weariness that was in your voice… that was the first time I acknowledged it, but not the first time I had heard it. I asked you why… and you told me to leave. To just go. To just leave you be. 

You were hurting. I had caused it again. I had no recourse. 

I left. 

We met in passing… over the span of the next year… 6 times. A smile, a passing remark. A moments respite in the throngs of the crowded ball rooms. 

When you found yourself drunk and on the parapet… along with me. 

It wasn’t shocking that I found you in my embrace. I had hated you for so long, longing for you was only the next logical step. 

I whispered your name. And you left. 

I haven’t seen you since. It’s been a year since that night. And I am drunk again. But their wont be a willing man in my arms tonight. Just more liquor until I cannot stand. More pain until I cannot stand. More of me, until I cannot stand the thought of you. 

You left me a year ago, and I have listened to every album, every record, every song. 

So here is to you, you dark haired wonder. Harry, I raise this glass to you. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing… I owe you one.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry.
> 
> Kudos and Comments are always appreciated. I sometimes feel like I am writing into a void.


End file.
